Medieval England
during the Middle Ages]]Medieval England was an era of English history which lasted from 1066 to 1485, from the inauguration of Norman rule and feudalism in England after the Battle of Hastings to the end of the Wars of the Roses at the Battle of Bosworth Field and the emergence of the Tudor period and the English Renaissance. History A Prosperous Realm Background knights marching]]The old aristocratic Saxon and Anglo-Danish families were swept away after the Norman invasion, and their lands taken over by William the Conqueror, his family, and his Norman and French followers. The Normans were organized for war. They introduced a new type of landholding, feudalism, designed to keep them in a state of battle readiness. King William I took all the land into his own hands and granted large estates to his main supporters in return for specified military service. These "great men", the tenants-in-chief of the King, granted land to their own supporters who undertook to give military service as knights, the battle-winning armored cavalry of the 11th and 12th centuries. The men and women who worked the land for their lords, either as free peasants or as unfree tenants, made up the greater part of the population. The rhythm of their lives remained relatively unchanged, subject to the seasons. History king with his knights]]The ruling class, the king, his family, the leaders of the Church, bishops, and abbots, and the great landowners, were all Norman or French. After the conquest, the largest estates went to William's family and to his companions in battle. William's half brother Odo, the Bishop of Bayeux, was given the Bishopric of Winchester and lands in Kent. Families such as the FitzOsberns and de Warennes were granted landholdings across several counties. French was their language. From their estates they had access to the best food, and acquired the best horses, armor, and the finest clothes and jewellery form the revenues they collected. Kings and aristocrats The Norman kings established "The Forest", large areas of land reserved for royal hunts, and subject to special laws designed to preserve these habitats. Game such as deer, wild boar, and birds could be caught in The Forest for sport and to supply aristocratic tables with meat. Indeed, hunting and hawking were important features of aristocratic society, teaching skills that would be useful in war. The great families were part of an international society and had as much contact with their kin in Normandy, France, or Flanders as with the tenants to whom they granted land. When they were not obeying the king's summons to attend him, they were constantly on the move between their estates. Life in the countryside peasants at work]]The majority of people lived in the countryside, which was divided into thousands of landholdings called manors. A manor usually included a village and its surroundings, although some manors incorporated several settlements. Fields were open, long, narrow strips of land. The peasants who worked the land paid part of their annual harvest ot the lord of the manor as rent, another part went ot the Church. Some peasants were free tenants, others were unfree (villeins), who worked the lord's own fields. They were required to give the lord labor and to pay certain fines (fees) such as heriot, when inheriting a landholding, and merchet, on the marriage of a daughter. The lord of the manor protected his tenants in times of war and acted as judge in disputes between neighbors. Some knights owned only one or two manors, but most had several, and managed them through an agent called a reeve. Large estates consisting of numerous manors, often widely scattered around the country, were known as honors. Abbeys and cathedrals owned manors, as did secular lords. Population growth countryside in Somerset]]During the Norman period, the population rose from around 2,250,000 in 1086 to an estimated 5,750,000 by 1220. To meet this increase, forests were cleared to bring new lands called "assart" into cultivation, reducing the amount of woodland in England from 15% to 10% of the total land surface. Some changes in landholding took place too, as land farmed directly by the lords of the manor was turned into smallholdings for freemen and villeins who paid cash rents. The expansion of economic life led to changing social bonds. Many obligations of service, whether providing a knight, or working on a lord's land, were commuted into cash payments, and the use of coins became more important. Sheep were an increasingly profitable commodity. As well as providing meat and cheese, their skins were used for parchment. They were most valued for their wool, which was exported in bulk to the weavers of Flanders during the 12th and 13th centurires. Many of the great monasteries became specialists in sheep farming. Urban centers , a medieval abbey in London]]Growing popultion and increased agricultural production went hand in hand with a rise in the number and size of towns. The Domesday Book identifies 112 towns. Approximately 150 years later this number had grown to 240, all founded by royal charter. The greatest of these were London, Lincoln, Norwich, York, and Winchester. From a population of 15,000 in the days of William I, London had grown to 80,000 inhabitants in 1300. All the major towns were religious centers, often cathedral cities, but they were also market towns and centers of manufacture. Surplus agricultural produce was brought from country estates to be sold in the towns, and merchants found a ready market there for goods such as wine and furs. The most common urban trades were those involved with the supply of food and drink - brewers, bakers, and butchers. Every town had at least one tailor, ironsmith, carpenter, shoemaker, and weaver. Only the large centers would have had more specialized craftsmen. Town dwellers Besides the king, other landowners granted charters to build new market towns. These were a source of profit for those who established them and for the merchants and artisans who lived there. Anyone, whatever his origin, who could prove he had lived in a town for a year and a day was a freeman. If he held land in a town, he would have burgage rights, which meant he could subdivide, sell, mortgage, and bequeath it freely. The royal boroughs were governed by the king's officials, but the richer merchants also played a major part in the administration. Clergy of every rank and type lived in the towns, and schools for the education of boys were attached to cathedrals and monasteries. The universities of Oxford and Cambridge came into being. Instruction was always in Latin, the language of the Church. Books were still rare objects; texts were copied and illustrated by hand. Aftermath This period of prosperity, population gwrowth, and increased economic activity came to an end at the beginning of the 14th century. In 1314, a bad harvest hit Britain, and for the next seven years (1317 was the only exception), repeated violent winds and rainstorms destroyed crops and caused disease in livestock. As crop yields fell, landowners found themselves without grain surpluses to boost their incomes. In parts of southern England, the harvest was 55% below normal, and some areas suffered famine. Town life stagnated as demand for manufactured goods fell, and exports of cloth and wool declined. In 1304, 46,000 sacks of wool were exported from England; 15 years later this figure fell to 30,000. There is evidence that villages began to be abandoned early in the 14th century, as the amount of cultivated land contracted, a crisis that deepened after the widespread devastation and depopulation of the Black Death. Knights and Bowmen Background After the end of the Roman era, England did not have a standing army. Equipment varied and the warrior retinues of Anglo-Saxon kings fought largely on foot. The Roman army of Britain was a professional force, with a standing army of legionaries and auxiliaries who served for 25 years. In early Anglo-Saxon times this was supplanted by a warrior ethos, with each free man expected to defend his lord. By the time of the Norman conqueste in 1066, England had a military organization of sorts, with a levy, the fyrd, liable for service in the army when called up, and a more permanent body of aristocratic housecarls and thegns. Armed with axes or occasionally swords, and lightly armored, they were fundamentally foot soldiers. History knight during the Hundred Years' War]]By the 11th century in northern France a practice of mounted warfare had emerged, with the knight at its center. With lance or spear, sword, and chain main armor, he was the ancestor of the medieval knight. After 1066, this class of warrior was imported into England, along with the system of feudal vassalage, by which knights held land in return for the obligation to provide military service to their lord. The chivalric code At the apex of the feudal pyramid lay the king, the chief landholder of the whole system. No military campaign could begin without his lawful consent. From the 12th century, there emerged the idea that only the king could make knights; in 1102 a council in London decreed that abbots should not make them, showing how the control of the system of knighthood was becoming restricted. Around this time, an idea of chivalry also emerged, according to which knights were expected to conform to a moral code. These included rules on bravery, honor, and respect towards each other and courtesy for women and the Church. Knights were created with an elaborate ceremony of "dubbing", during which the king laid the sword on the knight. A kind of aristocratic career path was established in which a noble child progressed from page through to squire and then finally achieved knighthood. Poems, such as the Romances of Chretien of Troyes, reinforced this ideology, glorifying the moral basis of knighthood. Tournaments provided a way for knights to sharpen their skills and burnish their reputations outside the field of warfare. They were said to have been invented by Geoffrey de Preuilly in France around 1066, and imported to England by Richard II. By the reign of Edward III, they were elaborate affairs. The successful end of a Scottish campaign in 1342 was celebrated by an astonishing 15-day festival of jousting. Siege warfare The reality of warfare was rather different to the ideal of the chivalric code. Replacing mounted warriors was extremely expensive, and consequently most medieval armies spent their time avoiding pitched battles. There was only a handful of major encounters involving European armies in the 12th centuriy (with Tinchebray in 1106, Northallerton in 1138, and Alarcos in 1195) being the most notable). Siege warfare was more common, with the castles that had sprung up throughout Northern Europe, including England, providing the arena for most military action. Castles, however, almost never fell to direct assault, usually succumbing due to treachery or the exhaustion of supplies by one or other side. The armies commanded by the English kings of the 12th to 15th centuries were not standing ones. They had to be recruited for each campaign on an ad hoc basis, and by the 1370s soldiers normally served on a contract of six months duration. The knights became progressively more elaborately armored. The helmet now covered the whole head, and the basic suit of chain mail was encased with a series of metal plates sewn on at weak points. The importance of the crossbow As the knights became notionally less vulnerable to killing blows, so their battlefield role became less flexible. A key weakness of the medieval heavy cavalry was that once it had charged it was hard to regroup, or if the charge itself became bogged down in difficult terrain or through missile fire, its impact would be greatly lessened. The English kings had always been able to recruit a wider range of troops to their army than the knights, by such means as Assizes of Arms, which called all free men - who were expected to possess weapons - to serve their monarch. It was such a summons that recruited the English army that won the Battle of Falkirk in 1298. Edward I's reign, indeed, saw the recruitment of infantry at a level not seen before, and in his Welsh war of 1282-83 there may have been as many as 10,000 of them. Another key component of these armies were archers. Although Edward had around 250 crossbowmen during the Welsh wars - whose bolts could penetrate armor at nearly 300 meters - more prominent were the longbowmen who bore a bow more than 6.5 feet long with a pulling power of up to 176lb. A mass of these, as deployed at Crecy in 1346 or Agincourt in 1415 could prove lethal to the feudal cavalry, who were decimated before they could reach the English lines. By the mid-14th century, they had become crucial to English armies in France. Edward III landed with 2,500 archers and 1,400 knights and men-at-arms at Antwerp in 1338 - a typical ratio. Long pikes were added to the infantry arsenal to create bristling armored hedgehogs which horses could not penetrate. This equipment - and the longbow - were far cheaper and more widely accessible to lower social groups than the armory of a knight. Once again, the most important component of armies had become the footsoldiers. Aftermath arquebusier in battle]]By the mid-15th century, developments were taking place that would once again revolutionize the battlefield, rendering both knights and bowmen obsolete. Gunpowder weapons appeared in the 14th century, but it was not until the 15th century that cannon began to have a real impact, rendering sieges a more certain proposition for the attackers. They were first used to real effect on the battlefield in the French defeat of the English at Castillon in 1453. Full plate armor developed in the late medieval period. Handguns, which were developed in the middle of the 15th century, were at first of limited use, but the increasing numbers of arquebusiers in European armies rendered armor useless. As guns grew more effective, and the likelihood of achieving a quick and decisive victory through their use increased, so pitched battles grew more common in the 16th century. Cavalry, where it remained, was more lightly armed, and with the diminution of the military role of knights by the 15th century, it lost its central role in the social hierarchy of the country. Religious enthusiasm Background ]]The Anglo-Norman kings sought to strengthen the independence of the English Church. This brought them into frequent conflict with the papacy. William I was crowned King of England with the papacy's support. He appointed churchmen from Normandy as bishops, and initiated the construction of great stone cathedral churches and abbeys in the Romanesque style. Relations between the King and the Church deteriorated in the 12th century. Henry II's Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket, was murdered at the King's behest for refusing to put the interests of the Crown before the Church. A further crisis came when King John rejected the Pope's nominee, Stephen Langton, as Archbishop of Canterbury, leading to his excommunication by the Pope. New religious orders, such as the Cistercians and Carthusians, were established in Britain before 1200 to meet the need for greater monastic spirituality. History During the 13th century, the Church in England, as in the rest of Europe, increased in power, organization, and influence. The Lateran Council of 1215, convened by Pope Innocent III in Rome, set out standards of reform for the behavior of the clergy, which the English bishops sought to follow. For example, robert Grossteste, the Bishop of Lincoln from 1235 to 1254, instruccted that the clergy in his diocese should preach regularly to their parishioners. The century also witnessed a new development as religious orders of Franciscan and Dominican fiars arrived in England. The friars were committed to a life of poverty, and because they chose, unlike monks, to live in, and not apart from, the communities in which they served, the friars brought the practice of the Christian religion to the people of England's growing towns. They also came to dominate teaching in the newly established unversities of Oxford and Cambridge. Service and criticism ]]In the centuries that followed the new orders' arrivals, influential churchmen, such as William of Wykeham and William Waynflete, each in turn Bishop of Winchester, and Henry Chichele, the Archbishop of Canterbury, founded schools and university colleges to provide a source of educated clergy to act as skilled administrators for both the King and the Church. For lay people, religious observance was expressed in many ways. For the rich, endowing a chantry chapel, where priests would say mass and pray in perpetuity for the founder's soul after death, was considered to be a path to avoiding their eternal damnation. Lay people also showed their piety by giving sizeable donations or legacies to charitable institutions for the care of the sick, aged, and indigent. Pilgrimage, which was a journey to the shrine of a saint, was also seen as a means of gaining spiritual merit. Geoffrey Chaucer's poem, The Canterbury Tales, written in the late 14th century, tells of a group of pilgrims on their way to Canterbury, Kent to visit the shrine of the saint and martyr, Thomas Becket. However, the growth of the Church as a worldly and powerful institution caused unease among many clergy and lay people. One churchman who tried to improve the situation was Archbishop John of Thoresby, who as Archbishop of York in 1352-73 set about reforming the clergy in his province, and put together a catechism in Latin and English for the instruction of lay people. William Langland's long narrative poem in English, Piers Plowman, written in 1360-87, is a critique of the Church and its practices, as well as an exploration of how to discover the true meaning of the Christian life. The Lollards ]]The most open and subsersive expression of tihs mood of discontent with the Church came from the Lollard movement, which rose to prominence in the second half of the 14th century. Reflecting the controversial teachings of the Oxford theologian, John Wycliffe, the Lollards challenged the wealth of the Church, its involvement in the secular world, its doctrine of the Eucharist (the central rite of the Christian Church), and the exclusive role of the priesthood in the administration of the sacraments. Most importantly, to give ordinary people access to an understanding of the Bible, Wycliffe and his collaborators made the first translation of the Bible into English. Lollardy subsequently found its way into all levels of society in England. In Europe, it influenced the teachings of Jan Hus - the Czech reformer who was condemned to be burned at the stake as a heretic by the Council of Constance in 1415 - and also foreshadowed many of the theological teachings of Mratin Luther, Huldrych Zwingli, and other later Protestant reformers. Although the Church condemned his theological writings, John Wycliffe himself was protected by Oxford Univeristy. His followers also found protection, initially from John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, who was also an uncle of King Richard II. In the 15th century, Henry IV and Henry V, who ruled as the first Lancastrian kings of England, supported the Church in its opposition to Lollard heresy, and regularly persecuted its adherents. Aftermath The 14th and 15th centuries saw an increasing quest in England for both personal spiritual devotion and a direct relationship with God. Julian of Norwich (1342-1416) lived as a hermit in a cell attached to the Church of St. Julian in Norwich. In Sixteen Revelations of Divine Love, believed to be the first book in English written by a woman, she describes a series of intence visions she had of Jesus. Julian's writings greatly influenced Margery Kempe (1373-1438), a married woman who had several children, but all her life felt called to Christ, and made extensive pilgrimages throughout Europe. The Book of Margery Kempe describes both her journeys and the inner mystic conversations she had with Christ. Poets of the People Background Vernacular English literature grew out of a fertile mix of traditions including Anglo-Saxon and Norman literature. The Germanic meter of Anglo-Saxon tradition influenced the 7th-century Creation Hymn of the monk-poet, Caedmon, and Beowulf. The prose of Aelfric (10th-11th centuries) had a clear, direct vernacular style. The Anglo-Norman strand included 13th-century romances such as Floris and Blancheflour and the classic French courtly love poem Roman de la Rose. History Four terms help in understanding the writers of Chaucer's time: Old English, Germanic, Middle English, and vernacular. Old English, or Anglo-Saxon, was an early English form used between the 5th and 12th centuries. It grew out of the dialects of Germanic peoples - including Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and Scandinavians - who settled in Britain. Middle English evolved from Old English after absorbing French influences from the Norman conquerors. Vernacular languages are those spoken every day by ordinary people. Chaucer's world ]]Geoffrey Chaucer (1343-1400) was born the son of a prosperous London wine merchant. He made a good marriage and held a succession of important posts for king and country, including being made customs controller for the port of London in 1374 and clerk of the king's works in 1389. He wrote and translated throughout his career and was said to have adorned the English language with new words, most directly borrowed from French. Chaucer was in the right place at the right time. At the court of Richard II, a great patron of literature and art, English was replacing Anglo-Norman. Chaucer was already well steeped in vernacular French and Italian literature, partly thanks to diplomatic trips abroad. He translated some of the French courtly love poem Roman de la Rose into the Middle English Romaunt of the Rose and was knowledgeable about the Italian writers Dante (1265-1321), Petrarch (1304-74), and Boccaccio (1313-75). His story Troilus and Creseyde has an Italian flavor. A very English tale Chaucer blended all of these traditions to develop a rich, flexible language that culminated in his late Middle English masterpiece, The Canterbury Tales (1387-1400), with its bawdy humor and unforgettable cast of characters drawn from right across 14th-century English society. This collection of lively tales, told in rhyming couplets, was influenced by the multiple tales of Boccaccio's Decameron (1350). It features a group of diverse pilgrims, from an outwardly pious but bigoted prioress to a lusty miller, on their way to Thomas Becket's shrine at Canterbury. They tell tales to pass the time, with settings ancient and modern, and embracing every tradition from bawdy comedy to courtly romance. These showcase the keen sense of drama, humor, vivid storytelling, and stimulating ideas that make Chaucer's vernacular writing so effective. A life from the knight's tale: A mantelet upon his shuldre hanginge./Bret-ful of rubies rede, as fyr sparklinge. This translated into modern English: "a short mantle hanging on his shoulders/was brimful of rubies, sparkling like fire." Important influences Chaucer and his contemporaries used certain devices to make their work immediate, distinctive, and of their place and time. One is the use of English Midlands dialects, widespread at the time, which evokes ordinary people rather than a classics-educated elite. Another is the medieval tradition of courtly love and romance. This was a popular European fashion, developed in France, for tales of a knight's noble love for an aristocratic lady. First told by troubadours, these stories followed strict rules. A third strand is the importance of hetoric. Part of any educated person's skills, this was the ability to speak or write in a persuasive way and make an impact. Another major strand was the use of an alliterative style - standard in English literature at this time. This was a Germanic/Old English meter, using a marked pattern of stresses within "half lines", in verse that was typically unrhymed and was markedly different to other rhymic forms from abroad. The later 1300s saw a Middle English alliterative revival. Creating an English tradition Other important writers contributed to the vernacular tradition. The poem Piers Plowman by William Langland (1330-1400) told a tale, in a down-to-earth style, of the search for truth. It is a classic of the Middle English alliterative revival, as is the more courtly Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (by an unknown contemporary of Chaucer) and the epic narrative poem Morte Arthure, about King Arthur. The English, French, and Latin work of John Gower, author of the allegorical tales Confessio Amantis (1386-93), was also influential. Aftermath The pioneering work of Chaucer and his contemporaries made possible the great body of English literature that has appeared since his death. In the 15th and 16th centuries, vernacular writing gained increasing ground. A French-style courtly influence also persisted, for example in the work of poet Sir Richard Ros (b. 1429), who probably translated Alain Chartier's La Belle Dame Sans Merci. Chaucer influenced writerssuch as Spenser, Shakespeare (who inherited Chaucer's love of contemporary language), and John Dryden. Merchants and Guilds Background ]]The agricultural crisis of the first two decades of the 14th century was followed by the Black Death, which reduced the population by more than one-third. This led to a sharp decline in economic activity. The remaking of feudal bonds and obligations, already underway before 1350, continued as the countryside was depopulated. In some places, labor became so scarce that wages rose and villeins left their manors to find paid work in the towns or become tenant farmers. However, because there was no one to sell goods to, prices fell and landowners imposed harsher conditions on their tenants. The Peasants' Revolt in 1381 saw these factors coalesce into an outbreak of popular resentment against wealthy churchmen and royal administrators. Urban centers also suffered. After 300 years of steady growth, towns declined as the volume of trade was reduced. Some small towns reverted to being farming communities or disappeared. History victims being wheeled on carts]]A survey of Gloucester in 1455, a hundred years after the Black Death, presented a gloomy picture of urban decline - houses in ruin, not tenanted, or turned into stables. Gloucester was one of several formerly prosperous wool-exporting ports that had suffered badly as sales of wool and wovel cloth to Europe fell away and stayed low. Even so, the wool industry remained the most valuable business in England and Scotland, providing a major source of revenue, through its taxation, for the king and his administration. Urban decay was not confined to the wool towns. In Canterbury, the rents received by landlords for houses fell by 33% between 1350 and 1400, and remained low into the following century. Towns and cities found new ways of coping with these difficulties. Overall, the urban-based population swelled as large numbers of landless peasants and unemployed moved into the towns looking for work. All towns would have maintained the trades necessary for daily life- bakers, butchers, tanners, leather workers, and blacksmiths - but some towns and regions developed specialized trades and areas of economic activity. Birmingham was known for its manufacture of oscythe blades; Burton-on-Trent was already famous for brewing. Medieval guilds Within the towns and cities, each trade was organized into a guild - an association of merchants or craftsmen. Guilds were run by masters and served many functions. They offered professional training, agreed standards of quality and measurement, and provided a network of mutual support for everyone involved in a particular trade. Above all, they were protectionist, designed to exclude outside competition. As commerce recovered, the guilds became wealthy institutions with their own churches and buildings, and they supported their own charitable foundations. To enter a trade, a young man had to be accepted as an apprentice by a master, perhaps on payment of a fee by his family. He was contractually bound to his master and could not leave his master's household or work for anyone else during his apprenticeship (usually five to seven years from the age of about ten). At the end of this time, he became a journeyman, or a "day-worker", again working for a master. The ultimate aim of a journeyman was to become a master himself. For this, he would need to prove himself a skilled craftsman and a successful businessman, and win the acceptance of the masters of his guild. Although the vast majority of apprentices were male, some girls were able to train in crafts, including seamstressing, baking, and cordwaining (shoemaking). Growth of London in the 1400s]]By the end of the 14th century, London was becoming pre-eminent in trade and manufacturing. Many businesses concentrated their activities here, including the goldsmiths who, as well as making high-value objects and jewellery, also provided banking services. London grocers dominated the import and sale of spices such as ginger and pepper from Asia - by now considered essential to flavor the food of the wealthy. The Bishop of Carlisle bought his spices in London and had them carried north as he knew the quality and range of products were better than any he could acquire locally. Among other specialized crafts, London was also known for the casting of church bells. Urban success story ]]Richard "Dick" Whittington (1354-1423) was a younger son with no prospects of inheriting land in his home county of Gloucestershire, so he went to London to learn the trade of a mercer (a dealer in cloth). His success as a merchant selling English fabrics to Europe led to him becoming a master of his guild and then a councilman of London, part of the government of the city. He subsequently served as Lord Mayor of London four times during the reigns of Richard II, Henry IV, and Henry V, frequently lending large sums of money to the royal exchequers. He gave money for the rebuilding of the London Guildhall, where the leading merchants could meet to discuss business, and for several churches. He also paid for drainage and sanitation works. In his will he made donations for the construction of almshouses and the repair of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, as well as two prisons. English merchants, including the likes of Whittington, travelled to annual trade fairs in the cities of Europe to buy and sell goods. The fairs of Flanders in Europe were particularly important for the wool trade, but English merchants would also travel to fairs in Germany, Italy, and as far away as Constantinople (Istanbul). European merchants established guilds in English cities. The most famous of these was the Hansa, the association of German merchants, who had their own walled community in London at the Steelyard. Elsewhere in the city, Lombard Street was named after the area where goldsmiths and bankers from northern Italy (Lombardy) were concentrated. Recovery of the towns By the end of the 15th century, town life was recovering throughout England. Towns and cities were more than just places of trade and manufacture. They remained important religious centers, with numerous churches and religious foundations. It is estimated that the City of London had more than 100 religious buildings and Norwich had 60. At the same time, the royal administration and courts of justice, which in earlier medieval times had been peripatetic, moving from place to place, came to be permanently based in towns. Aftermath London's rise in relation to the other towns and cities of England, Wales, and Scotland continued inexorably throughout the 16th and 17th centuries. In 1400, the population of London was 50,000; by 1550, it had risen to 120,000. Although the Great Fire of London (1666) swept away most of its medieval buildings, reminders of the old city are still to be found in street names such as Cheapside and Poultry. The greatest legacy of the medieval city ar ethe City Livery Companies such as the Goldsmiths, Mercers, Vintners, Skinners, Haberdashers, and Fishmongers - successors of the guilds, which still support educational and community charities in the city. In the 19th century, socialist idealists such as William Morris and C.R. Ashbee attempted to revive the medieval guild-craft tradition in the arts and crafts movement. Others have sought to trace a connection between the medieval guilds that protected the interests of artisans, and the trade unions that sprang up in the industrial cities of the 19th century as workers' organizations bargaining for better working conditions. Category:Eras